Monday, July 12, 2010

A whole lotta shaking going on...

Ps. 55: 19 God shall hear, and afflict them, even he that abideth of old. Selah. Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.
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Change...

Like sands through the hourglass...so are the days of our lives. I like that. But did you notice sand in an hourglass never changes? Never. The poor grains are caught up in a bottle on the brink of suffocation and all you can do is turn it upside down to get a different perspective of the granules, but they’re the same granules, same sand.

Can you imagine a life without change? I know a lot of people think change is a horrible aspect of their lives that they wish would just stop happening. Can you imagine a child without a changed diaper? A child who never made it past one?

Life is all about change and when it happens, you either embrace it, or get left behind in a stagnate mode, a funk where you become timid and anti-social almost unable to function in the world.

Last week we began f2k. It was the old site, our old rooms, our old fellowship. Then something happened. As with many site’s, it began its descent and people were having problems logging in, unable to post, they were frantically trying to gain access only to find, there was no access to be had.

So Bob Hembree, creator of f2k, created an entire NEW f2k site. It was in the works for a while but he wanted to run it through the testing phases before he used it. Well guess what happened last week? He placed the New F2K Social site up and we all had to migrate to the site or be left behind. (sounds like a book)

We marched into the social scene and started posting, we scrambled along like a herd of cattle being led into a pen. We migrated and changed. Tweaks were made, friends were requested, ‘like’s were going up like fireworks and we settled into our new digs like a butt in wet sand.

The new site is like facebook and it can be quite a frenzied day when you see numerous posts, trying to read and take it all in. I stick to my room. It keeps me out of trouble. You know how you have friends on FB, well on this site of 490 students, they friend request you. Go ahead, friend request me, I try to accept, but it doesn’t work. Glitches are inevitable too. I’m not trying to win a popularity contest which is what it feels like. Do all these people REALLY want to be my friend or just rack up their friends quota?

Imagine if on facebook, you had hundreds of friends all posting, and not one of them ‘hidden’. Kinda crazy, yes?

I’m open to change. Just ask me what happened eight years ago when the most massive change of my life happened. I didn’t hide from it, cower to it, run from it, I instead embraced it. And look at me now! All the better for the change.

F2k has taken on the change and the students are embracing it. It’s what writers do. We embrace change.

Bummer. If it's like FB now, I definitely won't be doing it again. Good thing I got in before it went all social networky. My screen reader definitely will have problems, and with all that friending and liking, way too much noise to get through with Alex. Mayjor bummer. Why does everything have to be a social network these days?

I remember after we got back from West Virginia, my first Christmas blind. I asked B's parents if their living room furniture was yellow. I don't know why I pictured it yellow. I have this vision of their house in my mind and though I'm sure it's highly inaccurate, just being in the space gave me my own image. It'll be my image of that house until the day I can't remember it. It's all about new ways of doing things, and while it's hard in the moment, the pain passes.

About F2K and the social scene: 1st, having found you here, I really wanted you to be my friend there, Joni. Thank you for accepting.Since this is my first F2K experience, I have nothing with which to compare, but I have met many lovely and interesting new friends through the classroom assignment, made responses, comments, etc., but found there are sometimes more personal discussions that are better handled through the FB Friend personal message set-up. I must run...John has supper ready...hope I said this as I meant!Smiles~M. Sue

Hi Joni, In our warm-up prompts and during some follow-up responses, some comments were made by many of us about our lives that perked a variety of interests, some of which I wanted to discuss further but felt it inappropriate to draw out any more in that venue; hence I invited them to be friends and took it from there. I haven’t visited the other classrooms so have nothing with which to compare, although I read today I should do so before completing Lesson 1. I have been a busy bee trying to learn my way around a fascinating new world.Smiles~Sue

I registered through WVU/F2K. I did see the groups for the classes, I think, but not anyone posting assignments, so maybe that was the group (the authors' groups, like Madeliene L'Engle) for social networking?